Sustainability Horizons is CISL’s monthly scan of issues and evidence coming into view, but which may not yet feature in the mainstream sustainability debate. This is not a prediction of the future, but a way of helping practitioners and policymakers to get early notice of new ideas, trends or evidence, to inform their own view of what might or should happen as a result. Find out more about our own work in developing new ideas and approaches that have the potential to deliver transformational change and rewire the economy.

Latest review

Reforesting as climate change mitigation

July 2019: A recent report highlights that planting 1 trillion trees on 0.9 billion-hectare land could substantially increase carbon capture. In comparison to other mitigation strategies, reforesting programmes are the cheapest and most efficient approach.

Water scarcity in India

July 2019: Water scarcity is a global challenge requiring local solutions. New evidence supports a shift towards localised small scale programmes to combat water scarcity and argues against large-scale infrastructure projects to address the water crisis in countries such as in India.

Sheath-run artificial muscles

July 2019: New evidence in the field of artificial muscles for use in robots, amongst others, proposes that twisting materials such as nylon into coils, coating it in polymer, and heating or cooling it to the effect of contracting or actuating, creates a new and cheaper form of “smart material” that may have the potential to replace pneumatic cylinders and electric motors.

Conservation burials in Britain

July 2019: Population growth and rapid urbanisation means that demand for burial spaces that will exceed graveyard capacity within the next five years. A new suggestion is to re-purpose Britain’s infrastructure to create green burial corridors by allowing ‘conservation burials’ alongside roads, railways and footpaths.

Renewable energy drives energy poverty

July 2019: New evidence argues that current policies such as taxes or subsidies to incentivise a shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy consumption may indirectly drive energy poverty and social exclusion, since low-income households are unable to afford increased utility prices.

Blooming seaweed

July 2019: Analysis of the Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt establishes a direct relation between the blooming seaweed and higher nutrient levels in the ocean. The ocean’s chemistry changes following higher nutrient discharge from the Amazon river in response to increased deforestation and fertiliser use since 2010.

Challenges of commercial sand extraction

July 2019: New evidence shows that rapid urbanisation is causing more sand to be extracted from rivers and beaches than can be replaced naturally. However, the informal industry is unregulated with only limited monitoring capacity of extraction methods or source origins.

Climate change and human health

July 2019: A large-scale first of its kind study outlines cross-European risks and connections between climate change and public health risks, promoting an increased policy focus on health risks and challenges of accessing health care facilities at the European level.

Hydrogen from wastewater

June 2019: Scientists have found a promising new way of using wastewater and sunlight to produce hydrogen. The technology almost doubles the efficient rate of ‘splitting’ water and delivers encouraging results for industrial scale application.

Palliative care

June 2019: The number of people with need for palliative care will rise by almost 87% by 2060. A global integrative policy framework could help integrate palliative care into public healthcare systems to alleviate economic costs and patient suffering.

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Adele Wiliams

Adele Williams, Communications and Media Manager

Email | T: +44 (0)1223 768451

Disclaimer

The views expressed in these external research papers are those of the authors and do not represent an official position of CISL, the University of Cambridge, or any of its individual business partners or clients.

Sustainability Horizons: what’s coming into view?

Find out more about our own work in developing new ideas and approaches that have the potential to deliver transformational change and rewire the economy.